I do like this video a lot, the music is catchy, with an evergreen message and has a nice, stylish aesthetic influenced by the Italian cartoon La Linea. (It also reminds me a bit to the flash animations made by Bruno Bozetto back then in the early 2000s)
According to a Youtube comment, it seems Jay Kay has claimed in interviews that "they were totally ripped off by the company that did this. Simple models, repeated animations, no backgrounds. Apparently the studio took off with a lot of money."
My guess is he was expecting the video to look like a Pixar/Dreamworks movie, which for many was the golden standard of quality animation back then, despite the fact certain visual aspects from those movies have not aged very well (Fortunately the good stories still haven't lost their charm)
The minimalistic visuals were clearly deliberate, and the people claiming this was "cheap" probably never animated anything in their lives, or only consider "good animation" entirely photorealistic videogame cutscenes.
I do think this is one of the best Jamiroquai videos, far memorable than the rest, but Jay Kay dislike for this was probably the reason the band never made another animation.
My only reservation towards this was the somewhat weird use of some outdated racial stereotypes...I mean, they clearly weren't made with a malicious intent (That would be totally against the tolerance message of the song) and even some artists I admire used a few of times (To denounce racism, mind you) but most of these works were from the 60s and 70s, it's frankly jarring seeing this kind of stuff during the year 2005. Not that I'm advocating for the "cancellation" of Jamiroquai or the people behind this video, but still weird anyway.
According to a Youtube comment, it seems Jay Kay has claimed in interviews that "they were totally ripped off by the company that did this. Simple models, repeated animations, no backgrounds. Apparently the studio took off with a lot of money."
My guess is he was expecting the video to look like a Pixar/Dreamworks movie, which for many was the golden standard of quality animation back then, despite the fact certain visual aspects from those movies have not aged very well (Fortunately the good stories still haven't lost their charm)
The minimalistic visuals were clearly deliberate, and the people claiming this was "cheap" probably never animated anything in their lives, or only consider "good animation" entirely photorealistic videogame cutscenes.
I do think this is one of the best Jamiroquai videos, far memorable than the rest, but Jay Kay dislike for this was probably the reason the band never made another animation.
My only reservation towards this was the somewhat weird use of some outdated racial stereotypes...I mean, they clearly weren't made with a malicious intent (That would be totally against the tolerance message of the song) and even some artists I admire used a few of times (To denounce racism, mind you) but most of these works were from the 60s and 70s, it's frankly jarring seeing this kind of stuff during the year 2005. Not that I'm advocating for the "cancellation" of Jamiroquai or the people behind this video, but still weird anyway.
